There’s a growing movement to defund the police, after the death of George Floyd and incidences of police brutality in the nationwide protests that came in the aftermath. New York State’s leaders say they would rather restructure the forces than cut their budgets.
New York City Mayor Bill deBlasio, following 10 days of protests where numerous videos showed incidences of potential police misconduct, announced that he was amending the city’s budget to take funds away from the NYPD’s $6 billion allocation, and put more money into social services including youth programs.
New York’s legislative leaders say they do not back simply cutting police forces, but they do believe there should be more money for other services. Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, in an interview with public radio and TV says it’s about more than simply defunding the police.
“I think what everyone is saying is that they really want government to focus on social spending in other areas,” Heastie said, via Skype. “(It’s about) income equality, it’s about access to education, it’s about people needing mental health services.”
Heastie, the first African American to become speaker, says Assembly democrats have for years advocated for spending more on measures to alleviate income inequality.
Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, the first African-American and first woman to lead the Senate, in a recent speech in the chamber talked of her brother, who quit the New York City Transit police force because he felt it was unjust to young African Americans, and of her son, who was stopped and frisked by police and ended up with a broken nose. Stewart-Cousins says she does not back simply cutting police budgets. She says it’s really about deciding what kinds of situations require a police response. And which could be better resolved by someone else, , like a mental health crisis, or aid for a homeless person.
“Certainly we are not calling for defunding the police,” Stewart-Cousins said, in an interview with public radio. “But a legitimate conversation about whether or not the police are the best people to send for a situation is, I believe, a valid conversation.”
State lawmakers took several steps this week to reform police practices, including banning the use of chokeholds as a form of restraint, and repealing a law that was used to shield police disciplinary records from the public.
Some state Senators want to do more. Senator Alessandra Biaggi, a Democrat from the Bronx, has introduced a bill to ban police use of tear gas, pepper spray and other chemical agents. During the past couple of weeks of protests, police in New York and in many cities across the nation have used the agents on peaceful protesters. Biaggi says there’s no good reason for police to ever use tear gas.
“It is meant to trigger pain in people, which we have seen in the videos we’ve watched across the entire country,” said Biaggi.
She says it’s even worse to use the chemical agents during a pandemic, because they cause people to cough and sneeze and remove their masks.
“We’re just increasing the risk of spreading Covid, as well,” Biaggi said.
Governor Andrew Cuomo, who has at times praised and criticized the police, says “one off” bills regulating a single aspect of policing is not the best approach. He thinks police forces need to be fundamentally “reimagined” and restructured to eradicate systemic racism.
“It’s not about tear gas,” Cuomo said. “It’s much broader than that. This is inherent racism. It’s about decades and decades of injustice.”
Cuomo says the “moment” for real change has come, and should not be wasted.
Senator Biaggi says she agrees.
“There is no one act that will solve systemic racism and injustice,” she said. “It requires collective efforts, and many, many actions over time that build on one another.”
Not everyone is in favor of making changes to the police. Many Republican lawmakers voted against some of the police reform bills, and State GOP Chair Nick Langworthy, in a statement, says deBlasio’s call to defund the police is “extreme” and “radical”, and he predicts it would make citizens less safe against terrorism, and have “catastrophic and deadly consequences."
AS REFORM BILLS PASS, SENATE LEADER TELLS PERSONAL STORY OF LIFE AFFECTED BY RACISM
The New York State legislature Wednesday wrapped up passage of a package of bills on police reform, as the Senate Leader delivered a very personal speech on how systemic racism has affected her life.
Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, the first African American woman, and first woman to lead the Senate, said in her speech that she has often talked about her father, a World War II veteran who served in a segregated US Army, and has said that as a mother of three sons and four grandchildren she “lives in worry”. But for the first time she told the story of her brother Bobby, a Vietnam veteran who served a decade as a New York City transit cop, until he quit. She says her brother was good police officer and joined the force so that he could “help our community,” but came to believe that he could change the system.
“He left because he was convinced that the system was created to give young black men a record,” Stewart-Cousins said.
She says he gave examples of what he had seen.
He saw two white kids fighting, they would be brought down to the stations and their families would be called,” she said. “And then he saw two black kids fighting and they’d be brought to the station and they’d be booked for assault.”
Stewart-Cousins says the resulting criminal records follow them for the rest of their lives.
Stewart-Cousins says one of her sons, Stephen, at the age of 18, was with two friends “on the other side of town”, when they were stopped and frisked by police. Nothing illegal was found on them. But the experience landed him in the emergency room of the hospital with a broken nose.
“Anybody knew that Stephen would never have resisted,” she said.
She spoke as the Senate , and the Assembly, passed a measure to create a permanent unit with the state Attorney General’s office to investigate allegations of police misconduct that result in the death of a New Yorker. It codifies into law a five year old executive order issued by Governor Andrew Cuomo that gave the AG power to appoint a special prosecutor after such incidents.
Senator Jamaal Bailey, the bill’s sponsor, says lawmakers “heard” the voice of the protesters who put aside their fears during the coronavirus pandemic and filled streets in cities across New York and the nation in the past weeks.
“In the time of crisis and Covid that we are in, people often forget about their own health infirmities and their own concerns about contracting Covid,” he said. “Because it was that important to make sure that they were in the streets, to make sure that their voices were heard, that enough is enough.”
Other measures approved earlier in the week ban police chokeholds, require state troopers to wear body cameras, and repeal a section of civil rights law, known as 50-a that many police forces and local governments used to shield police disciplinary records from the public.
Another bill makes it a hate crime to falsely make race-based claims on a 911 call.
Governor Cuomo is expected to sign the measures.
Senate Leader Stewart-Cousins say passage of the bills give her hope, but she says they can’t alone “fix racism in America”.
Most of the 23 Republicans in the Senate voted against the measure to set up the special unit within the attorney generals’ office and all the GOP Senators voted against the repeal of 50-a. Several republicans did vote for some of the other bills.
None spoke publicly on the floor against the measures on Wednesday.
The state’s Republican Party Chair, Nick Langworthy, issued a statement on the passage of the package of bills, calling them “anti-police”, and saying that Democrats are “creating a safe haven for criminals”, while the police are “put in handcuffs”. Langworthy condemns the killing of George Floyd, calling it an outrage and a sorrow, and an “evil” act, but he says the reforms need to be more sensible.